


It Cannot Touch My Heart

by Robin Hood (kjack89)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Cancer, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 07:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12127338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/Robin%20Hood
Summary: Rafael's heart sank when the doctor sat them down in her office to give them the prognosis. “Pancreatic cancer,” she said, her voice grave. “Stage 3.”Sonny reached out blindly for Rafael’s hand, his expression carefully controlled, far more than Rafael’s, and Rafael took his hand, linking their fingers together and squeezing his hand gently. “Ok,” Sonny said calmly. “So how do we fight this thing?”





	It Cannot Touch My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted for "one of them gets diagnosed with a terminal illness", so, like, 98% of this isn't my fault.
> 
> Sort of.
> 
> Title is from a Jim Valvano quote: Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

It started small, general discomfort that Rafael chalked up to old age. “I always told you your ill-spent youth would catch up to you,” he told Sonny with just a hint of gloating as Sonny rolled his eyes and adjusted the heating pad. **  
**

“Ill-spent youth,” Sonny snorted. “I’m not the one who couldn’t get off the floor last week because my knees gave up on me.”

Rafael arched an eyebrow at him. “Keep that up and it’s the last time I get on my knees for you.”

“Liar,” Sonny said, closing his eyes and leaning back against the couch, automatically tucking his toes under Rafael’s thigh, the way he had almost every night for the entirety of their marriage.

Rafael, however, flinched. “Jesus, Sonny, your toes are _freezing_ ,” he complained, reaching down to rub Sonny’s feet with one hand. “Maybe you should go see your doctor, make sure you’re not coming down with something.”

Sonny didn’t respond, and Rafael glanced over, rolling his eyes affectionately when he saw that his husband had fallen asleep. “Typical,” he said fondly, returning to his book, still rubbing Sonny’s feet with one hand.

But then Sonny seemed tired more often, and cold more often, and in pain more often, and Rafael finally suggested without any hint of joking, “You really need to go see your doctor.”

The general practitioner referred them to an internist, who took one look at Sonny’s scans and referred them to an oncologist.

Cancer.

Rafael knew when he had said “in sickness and in health” all those years ago, that he had meant every word. But he still didn’t think it could prepare him for this.

His heart sank when the doctor sat them down in her office to give them the prognosis. “Pancreatic cancer,” she said, her voice grave. “Stage 3.”

Sonny reached out blindly for Rafael’s hand, his expression carefully controlled, far more than Rafael’s, and Rafael took his hand, linking their fingers together and squeezing his hand gently. “Ok,” Sonny said calmly. “So how do we fight this thing?”

It was _so perfectly_ Sonny to instantly focus on how to fight this, and Rafael managed a slight smile at the taken-aback expression that flit across the doctor’s face. “You should know—” she started, but Sonny shook his head.

“If this is about odds, I don’t want to hear it,” he said, with conviction. “We’ve beaten worse odds. We’ll beat this.”

That was also so perfectly Sonny, and Rafael’s breath caught in his throat as it always did at his husband’s overwhelming, unwavering optimism. “Soleado,” he said softly, but Sonny just shook his head again and squeezed Rafael’s hand.

So Rafael didn’t argue.

He didn’t argue when Sonny was up at all hours of the night, sick from the chemo. He didn’t argue when Sonny finally admitted that he needed to take a health-related leave of absence from work. And he had no argument left in him when he ran his hand through Sonny’s hair one day and came away with a fistful of graying blond.

“Huh,” Sonny said, his smile fading only slightly. “Well, guess it’s time to shave my head.”

His smile was back in full force by the time he had (mostly successfully) shaved his head, and he even managed to laugh as he ran a hand over his head. “You’re probably gonna leave me now, huh?” he said with a grin. “I know you’re only married to me for my hair.”

Rafael rolled his eyes. “Yes, that’s absolutely the only thing that’s sustained me through 15 years of marriage,” he said with no small amount of snark. “And certainly not because you have an oddly shaped head.”

“Hey!” Sonny protested. “My head is gorgeous. Just like the rest of me.”

Though Rafael rolled his eyes again, he couldn’t help but smile. “Glad to see that cancer hasn’t stolen your self-confidence,” he said dryly.

And later that night, as he held Sonny close to him, Rafael pressed a kiss to his newly bald head and whispered, “I’ll never leave you. Hair or no hair. Never.”

Sonny just tipped his head up to capture Rafael’s lips with his own.

* * *

 

 

But then Sonny started getting sicker.

And weaker.

He lost what little weight he had managed to retain and was so pale and listless that he barely resembled the laughing man so full of life that Rafael had loved for longer than he’d been willing to admit at first.

When the doctor told them that the treatment was no longer working and that the cancer had spread, neither was surprised. “You still have a few options,” the doctor said. “There’s an experimental treatment we can try. We can try to resect what part of the tumor we can get to. But…” She hesitated. “You should know that either of those options buys you at most months. Quite possibly only weeks.”

Rafael looked over at Sonny, resignation in every line of his body. “It’s up to you,” he said hoarsely. “What do you want to do?”

“Take me home,” Sonny said instantly, looking up at Rafael, his eyes too large in his pale, drawn face. “I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life here.”

All Rafael could think of was his abuelita, how all she wanted was to spend what little time she had left at home. He thought especially of how he had robbed her of that, and as he looked at his husband, wrapped in a cardigan sweater that not even four months earlier Rafael had joked was too small for him, Rafael swore to himself that he would do everything in his power to make sure that Sonny’s last days were spent in their apartment, together, filled with love and laughter.

Enough to almost make up for the years they should still have had together.

“Ok,” he said simply, taking Sonny’s hand in his own. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

 

The very next day, Rafael put in for a full-time leave of absence from the DA’s office. “You’re gonna get bored of me,” Sonny said that afternoon, his head in Rafael’s lap.

“Impossible,” Rafael said. “Besides, I’ve got, like, fifteen years worth of Netflix to catch up on if I do get bored of you. All those lawyer shows that I get to critique…”

“Nerd,” Sonny said fondly.

Rafael rolled his eyes and bent down to kiss Sonny’s forehead. “Says the man who tried to call NBC because the cops weren’t holding their guns properly in one episode of _Minneapolis PD_.”

Sonny half sat-up in protest. “Gun safety is not a joke, Raf,” he said. “Someone could get hurt trying to copy that.”

“If you’re dumb enough to try copying a TV show…” Rafael murmured, grinning when Sonny sighed and elbowed him lightly in the stomach.

That was how they spent their time, in quiet moments together like that, their days punctuated by frequent visits from friends and family (though they were one and the same at this point. Rafael could never have anticipated the way the most important people in his life would somehow slot together, but he no longer questioned it when Liv, Rita, Lucia and Sonny’s mother Tessa told him that they were going to stop over on their way to brunch together. Just like he no longer questioned when Rollins and Gina showed up with identical evil smiles to ‘kidnap’ Sonny for an afternoon, or when Fin and Bella came over to play cards one night. They all just fit.

They were family.)

And Sonny greeted them all with his same beatific smile, up until the point when Sonny’s smile was more a grimace, and the thought of seeing people exhausted him.

“We understand,” Olivia whispered one day when she stopped by, Sonny napping on the couch. “He needs to keep his strength up.”

Rafael didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t sure how much longer Sonny would be able to keep his strength up.

Even though he could barely muster the strength to see their family, Sonny still insisted that they go to church every week, or at least every week that he was able, even though none of his suits fit anymore, and Barba dutifully accompanied him, kneeling down in the church while Sonny sat next to him, no longer able to get down and up again, no longer able to genuflect, even, coming down the aisle.

Rafael didn’t know who Sonny prayed to. He had lost what little faith he had left when the best man he’d ever known was told he was dying decades before his time.

But he prayed to a God that no longer listened nonetheless. For Sonny’s sake. And for the vague hope that maybe, one day, they’d be together again.

* * *

 

When Sonny died, it was a quiet Monday.

They were together in bed, Sonny unable to get up and Rafael unwilling to leave his side. Sonny was curled against him as Rafael read the newspaper out loud to him, since Sonny could no longer focus enough to read thanks to the pain meds.

He knew it would be soon.

Not even three days ago, Sonny had woken up in bed and told Rafael, his voice stronger than it had been in weeks, “You should call the priest.”

Rafael wasn’t sure if Sonny, as someone technically living in sin for the past fifteen years, qualified for Viaticum, but he called the priest nonetheless. And an hour later, when the priest left and Rafael went back into their bedroom, he found Sonny looking more content than he had in quite some time.

“I love you,” Sonny had told him, drawing him to the bed so he could kiss him.

“And I, you,” Rafael said, his voice thick with emotion.

There was none of that on that Monday. Rafael’s voice was thick instead with irony as he read a particularly scathing opinion piece outloud.

There was no grand moment, no final declaration of eternal love.

One minute, Sonny’s breath was faint and warm against Barba’s shoulder.

The next, it was gone.

Rafael almost didn’t notice, it was so subtle. But even in illness, even on death’s door, Sonny had always been so full of life that it would have been impossible not to notice that he had gone completely, utterly still. “Sonny?” Rafael asked, quietly.

He already knew.

He couldn’t bear the thought of Sonny not answering.

But Sonny didn’t answer, and Rafael turned, slowly, his heart stuttering painfully in his chest. Sonny’s eyes were closed, his head still resting on Rafael’s shoulder, but Rafael knew.

He reached out, slowly, and touched Sonny’s cheek gently. “I love you,” he whispered. “Now. Always. I love you.”

Sonny didn’t answer.

Sonny never again would.

* * *

 

Barba made it through the funeral by sheer willpower and an unwillingness to let the frankly overwhelming number of attendees see him cry. He had known Sonny was loved, but even he hadn’t realized how many lives his husband had touched.

Which was all the more reason why he couldn’t cry.

He had to be strong, because Sonny would have been.

Afterwards, he stood in the church and stared almost contemplatively at the massive crucifix. He didn’t flinch when Liv came over and touched his arm gently, though he did reach up with a slightly shaky hand to wipe away the stubborn tear he had barely noticed falling.

“How are you doing?” Liv asked softly.

Barba shrugged. “I just—” he started before his voice cracked, sounding almost as broken as his heart. “What do I do now?”

Liv shook her head and gripped his arm a little tighter. “You come with us to the bar,” she said, her voice steady, if sad. “You lift a glass to Sonny. And you get drunk, because he would expect no less of you.”

“And then what?” Barba asked dully.

Liv took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I guess you live the rest of your life trying to make him proud of you. Just like you always have.”

And Barba nodded, slowly, the sharp pain in his chest dulling, even just momentarily.

Make Sonny proud of him.

He could do that.

Or at the very least, he could try.


End file.
